Mr KERR(11.44 a.m.) —I could not help having a bit of a wry smile when the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (Mr Ruddock) rose to describe the manner in which he had participated in what he said was a coincidence of interests—

Mr Ruddock —Coincidence of view.

Mr KERR —Coincidence of view or an attempt to get something of a more bipartisan position in relation to his period of time as shadow minister. He referred to the fact that from time to time during the last 13 years ministers may have come forth with proposals and then berated the opposition if they did not immediately fall into line. I thought to myself, `The more things change, the more things stay the same.' I do recall on the very day that the Senate overturned the minister's regulations which sought to do much that he has now proposed by way of this legislation—to propose the cap and queue arrangements and measures designed to affect the right of immediate family members; that is, husbands, wives and dependent children—the minister came into the parliament and indulged in a fairly pointed dorothy dix attack on the opposition. I thought that was par for the course, but I discovered that it was really only revenge for the slights that he suffered in his time. Let us get to the basic point that is at issue here.

The issue at stake is the principle that was established in legislation—it was proposed by the now minister when he was spokesman for the opposition and agreed to by then government—that is, we would exempt direct family—husbands and wives, dependent children and aged parents—from arrangements relating to the power of the government to determine or to cap entry to this country. But even at that time there was a distinction between, on the one hand, husbands and wives and dependent children and, on the other hand, aged parents.

Whilst the act prohibited the minister from capping those categories, inherent in the arrangements was a recognition that people coming to this country did not have an absolute right to bring their aged parents here because of the balance of family test. That balance of family test meant that, where people did not have at least half their family in this country, they could not avail themselves of the right to sponsor their aged parents to come to Australia. So it was never an absolute fundamental right that anybody who was a permanent resident of this country could inherently bring their aged parents here.

I have sought, in discussions with the minister, to try to disaggregate, to break out, the two parts and to say that we hold it as part of Australia's traditions that no government has a part to play in determining who we should or should not marry or to interfere with that fundamental right of all parents to have care of their dependent children. We believe that it is unthinkable that the government should seek such a capacity. It is not necessary in the management of the program. In the spirit in which this debate is being conducted, I will not seek to use some of the evidence to debate this issue in detail, but I would simply make the assertion that it is completely within the minister's power to deliver a program of the size of that which he has undertaken to deliver without any recourse to draconian measures which would go to the fundamentals of family formation. I believe that the minister knows this.

It is true that there has been some recent one-off pressure in the numbers of people coming here under the marriage visa class. Much of that, of course, flowed from the aftermath of the decision—right or wrong—to admit some thousands of Chinese after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the recognition that those students who were here could remain. Naturally, some have married Australians in Australia but many have sought to bring their partners out from China and, as they are now permanent residents of this country, the law has facilitated that. That is a one-off situation which may have sustained some increasing pressure. In a sense, that is working its way through the pipeline. I think the minister would accept that some of the pressure that he might have expected to exist no longer exists. As the demographics have worked through, I think the minister is increasingly seeing that some of the fears that he might have harboured when he first took office are less real.

We would say that it is a fundamental family right to be able to have one's marriage partner and dependent children in Australia. We note, for example, that in the United States that is an absolute right. In most analogous countries it is an absolute right. A United States citizen has that absolute right; in fact, the spouse is not even counted as part of the immigration program. It is not really an immigration related issue. The minister recognised as much when he was the driving force to put into the legislation those measures which say that it is no part of the government's task to deal with those matters. In fact he said that it would be an unconscionable thing to do that. He said that if a government were to do that it would cause agony.

Fortunately, the government will be spared that agony by the minister's welcome concession today that he will accept the compromise proposal that I floated with him some while ago; that is, we would offer to him our support were he to propose a capping mechanism in relation to the aged parents matter. He responded by saying that, whilst this was not what he was seeking, he would recognise that that would significantly reduce the pressure that might otherwise exist in having to deal with other categories of the family program.

There are a lot of politics in this. The first time we discussed these matters it was indeed the intention of the opposition to propose exactly this amendment in the Senate, but the minister, determined to at least try his hand in the Senate to see whether there could be agreement on his proposals, insisted on taking this issue to the wire. Instead of an agreed package being wrapped up in the Senate when the matter was debated there, the matter has now come back to the House and the minister is proposing an amendment to his own legislation. I guess ministers are entitled to try their hands, but I think it is a bit unfortunate that we had a debate on this point that need not have happened. There was an opportunity to get closer to that coincidence of outcomes with less rhetorical impact in the debate.

I will make a couple of other points about this matter. In the debate in the Senate those representing the minister and speaking on behalf of the government frequently asserted that the minister was seeking a compassionate power to cap and queue applications for husbands and wives and children so he would not have recourse to the cap and kill provisions. I think it is at least significantly doubtful that the minister has any capacity, as he asserts, to cap and kill. If he does have those powers, it would require the most extraordinarily strange reading of an act which, because of the minister's intervention when in opposition, has at least on three occasions clearly expressed prohibitions against steps that would allow the government to interfere in that fundamental family formation issue.

I think that the minister would be heading into a legal minefield and a moral quagmire to do that. If the power does exist it would be akin to Borbidge's threat not to appoint a senator if a casual vacancy arose. In other words, it would certainly not be within the spirit of the legislation and I suggest probably not within the letter of the legislation. We have had this sort of veiled threat before that the minister would prevent Australians from being able to marry a person of their choice or have care of their dependent children and would use crude mechanisms to achieve that were we not to fall into line.

We are not going to fall into line in relation to those kinds of threats. We do not believe this parliament should fall into line in these matters. The minister is on record, in his previous incarnation as opposition spokesman, saying that it would be unconscionable—I think that was the word—that such a proposal be made.

We cannot take the politics out of this entirely. Significant areas of disagreement will remain. But I welcome the fact that the gap in the public policy area of debate has been narrowed somewhat as a result of these matters. I think that is healthy for Australia. I know there are some on my side who feel uncomfortable about the degree to which this middle ground has been achieved, particularly in relation to Sex Discrimination Act changes which are seen as a matter of principle, and some who believe that no ground should have been yielded in relation to the aged parents issue. Nonetheless, this is a matter of seeking to make intelligent public policy contributions to an issue which is always important to Australia's public debate and discussion but more importantly in the context of the present times where debate has been allowed to become so heated.

I thank the minister for at least recognising that, from time to time, it is the case that governments dump things onto the parliament and demand adherence and for recognising that it does require a process to work through it to try to get to a position which is going to be acceptable to the community, the parlia ment and all the parties in this House. I put on record my appreciation and thanks for the way in which the minor parties in the Senate have contributed to a sensible resolution of this debate. All on the non-government side in the Senate who have played their part in this debate deserve those warm words of thanks. They all came from different positions, but in the end they said that the government ought to draw back from some of the more extreme measures it was proposing, but did so in a constructive way.

I conclude by saying that we will support the amendment because it was an amendment that we were prepared to move in the Senate. I think that we can say that some commonsense cooperation has occurred. We firmly say that no government should restrict the most fundamental of human rights—the right to marry and start a family. I think the outcome is one which sustains good public policy.